Imran Rahman

For #FossilFriday have a look at the Late Cretaceous vertebrate remains of a Transylvanian Titanosaur and an anatomical record of the remains described by Diaz et al. (2025) in JSP.
Read the full study here: buff.ly/0eDwNJI

#PaleoSky #NHM #Dinosaur #Fossils #NaturalHistory #Giant #JSP #MindBlown

Prof. Susannah Maidment JSP Editor-in-Chief

Welcome to our new co-Editor-in-Chief Prof. Susannah Maidment

Susannah is a renowned expert on the palaeobiology of bird-hipped ‘ornithischian’ dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, London

🦕Read about her amazing work: buff.ly/4AfhohB

@tweetisaurus.bsky.social #Fossils #PaleoSky #Dinosaurs

This is why giraffes are never known to have played soccer.

𝘖𝘳𝘦𝘢 𝘭𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘢 - An extinct Giraffid species from the Middle Miocene Chinji Formation of Pakistan, with the slenderest metatarsal of any known ruminants, represents the oldest definitive member of the giraffine lineage. Nikos Solounias & Maria Ríos (2025): buff.ly/LqW97Ky

#FossilFriday #PaleoSky #NHM

Artwork by Gabriel Ugueto

I am proud and grateful to present a dream project today in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Meet #Mirasaura grauvogeli, a #wonderreptilewith skin appendages that rival feathers and hairs, challenging our view of reptile #evolution🪶🦎

🌟Did you know..?

While modern echinoderms like starfish have five-fold symmetry, the fossils of extinct echinoderms exhibit very different types of symmetry!

Read about the 3D reconstruction of ctenocystoids, Rahmen and Clausen (2009): buff.ly/xN07qjx

@imranrahman.bsky.social #fossils #PaleoSky

I'll have more info in a few weeks when I get back from fieldwork but I'll be recruiting 2 graduate students to begin in 2026 (1 PhD, 1 MS). My lab investigates macroevolutionary dynamics using phylogenetic methods & the fossil record. Please share with students having strong research interests!

Millions of years ago during the Silurian period, the Sahara Desert was a shallow sea full of aquatic animals like crinoids. Don’t be fooled! Crinoids are commonly called "sea lilies" but they aren't plants! They are echinoderms, like starfish and sea urchins, and many species are still alive today!

Millions of years ago during the Silurian period, the Sahara Desert was a shallow sea full of aquatic animals like crinoids. Don’t be fooled! Crinoids are commonly called "sea lilies" but they aren't plants! They are echinoderms, like starfish and sea urchins, and many species are still alive today!

#FossilFriday - explore the stunning armoured plates of a 390-million-year-old placoderm fish fossil from Manitoba! 🐟
Image shows the central and postorbital plates of Elmosteus lundarensis gen. et comb. nov. Read the full study by Jobbins et al. (2025): buff.ly/g6sEO4A

#PaleoSky #Fossils #NHM

#TaxonomyTuesday

A new study by Sam Hyde Roberts et al. in the journal of Systematics and Biodiversity comprehensively assesses the herpetofauna of Sainte Luce, south-eastern Madagascar: A littoral treasure trove!

Read the article here: buff.ly/Uoivhnt

#Systematics #biodiversity #NaturalHistory

Meet our Editorial team at JSP!

Dr Imran Rahman is one of our co-Editors-in-Chief and a leading specialist in the palaeobiology and evolution of early echinoderms at the Natural History Museum, London

Read more about his fascinating work: buff.ly/poOpGLF

@imranrahman.bsky.social

#PaleoSky

Registration is now open for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting 2025 in Birmingham! Register now for the best possible rates! #SVP2025 #2025SVP

vertpaleo.org/2025-registr...

Is the deuterostome clade an artifact? There is a long-standing consensus that the animal phyla closest to our own phylum of Chordata are the Echinodermata and Hemichordata. These three phy…

Fresh off the presses in @currentbiology.bsky.social : Is the deuterostome clade an artefact? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We (yours truly, Paschalis Natsidis, Laura Piovani and co-leads Paschalia Kapli and @maxjtelford.bsky.social) set out to try to answer this question.

Why? (1/12)

#FossilFriday 🪲
Batocara tuberosus sp. nov. Wei. from the lower Rhuddanian Lungmachi Formation of Zhenxiong, South China.

Read about the earliest known recovery trilobites following the Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME) and their ecological distribution buff.ly/WArP5V9

#Fossils #PaleoSky

Editorial Published in Journal of Systematic Palaeontology (Vol. 23, No. 1, 2025)

Have a look at our latest Editorial! 🦖

There have been some important changes happening at JSP! 🦕

#PaleoSky #JSP #Palaeontology #Paleontology #Fossils

Edrioasteroids are a strange echinoderm. I always think of them as a starfish/barnacle combination. They tend to attach to hard ground or encrust on brachiopods.

This is Belochthus orthokolus from the Ordovician Verulam Fm. near Brechin, Ontario.

#FossilFriday

The Rhenopyrgus family of Edrioasteroids are really strange.

This is Rhenopyrgus viviani from the Silurian Jupiter Fm. of Quebec. It was named after my friend and I donated a specimen for the 2020 paper. There are also some ostracods and tentaculites on the plate.

#FossilFriday

Today is the day!
#SEBExPalaeo will be live at #SEBCONFERENCE

9h30 in Nightingale 1&2
(follow signs for Bird Rooms)

Looking forward to seeing you for plenty of experimental #palaeontology #palaeobotany #3D #modelling and fun discussions!

At SEB 2025? @sebiology.bsky.social

Don't miss the Experimental Palaeobiology session- Bringing Fossils "Back to Life"
Our Editor-in-Chief Dr Imran Rahman will discuss how computational fluid dynamics can be used to test functional and ecological theories in fossils.

@imranrahman.bsky.social

Redescription of Pseudhesperosuchus jachaleri (Archosauria: Crocodylomorpha) from the Los Colorados Formation (Norian), Argentina Pseudhesperosuchus jachaleri Bonaparte, 1969 represents one of the best known early non-crocodyliform crocodylomorphs. The only known specimen, PVL 3830, was described by Bonaparte (1972) in his se...

A new study by J.M. Leardi on Pseudhesperosuchus jachaleri Bonaparte, 1969—an early non-crocodyliform crocodylomorph. The only known specimen was redescribed, revealing unnoticed pneumatic features, allowing its evolutionary relationships to be reassessed.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A small dinosaur skeleton mounted in a glass display case in the Earth Hall.

Finally managed to pay a visit to the newest dinosaur on display at the Natural History Museum! 🦖

Meet Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, a recently described species of small herbivorous dinosaur from North America.

#FossilFriday

🦴Mysterious elasmosaur skeleton from the Cretaceous of Vancouver Island has been named as Traskasaura sandrae

Read the article by O'Keefe et al. in JSP: buff.ly/DeWve85

Mandible of the 85 million year old marine giant shown in dorsal view with artistic impression by Robert O. Clark #FossilFriday

Nice find!

The discovery of a 500-million-year-old fossil, Atlascystis acantha, is the oldest known echinoderm with a bilateral body plan. It bridges the evolutionary gap between the closest living relatives of echinoderms.

https://shorturl.at/IOTc2

#FossilFriday !🪨

💀 Prosqualodon australis skull, a marine mammal from the Early Miocene of Patagonia 🐳

📄 Published in JSP by Gaetán et al.:
buff.ly/FkwovSK

Not sure what I love the most about this new animal: The fact that it's body is nearly perfectly triangular with a wide flat face—or that according to the diagram, this triangle is 90% butt

To be honest we don't really know, but there are no appendages or other structures that could plausibly have been used for locomotion. Perhaps they might have been able to move slowly through muscular contractions of the body? But that's speculative. Whatever they were doing, it wasn't quick!

Thanks! Planning to flesh that out some more with @laurentformery.bsky.social and @echinerd.bsky.social. Lots of exciting implications.

So we have additional specimens ranging in size from ~3 to 10 mm long, which we interpret as different ontogenetic stages. There are fewer ctenoid plates in the smaller specimens, so it points to those plates being added during growth. Meaning we see both plate addition and accretion.

500-million-year-old fossils reveal how the starfish got its arms | Natural History Museum How echinoderms evolved such an unusual shape has long troubled biologists.

Great write-up on our paper by @joshlukedavis.com @nhm-london.bsky.social www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...